French Revolution

Presentation created by Robert MartinezPrimary Content Source: Prentice Hall World HistoryImages as cited.

The crisis of 1789 coincided with the worst famine in memory. Starving peasants roamed the countryside or flocked to the towns, where they swelled the ranks of the unemployed. As gain prices soared, even people with jobs had to

spend up to 80 percent of their income on bread.

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In such desperate times, rumors ran wild and set off what was later called the “Great Fear.” Tales of attacks on villages and towns spread panic. Other rumors asserted that government

troops were seizing peasant crops.

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Inflamed by famine and fear, peasants unleashed their fury on nobles who were trying to re-impose medieval

dues. Peasants attacked the homes of nobles, set fires to old manor records, and stole grain from storehouses.

The violent attacks died down after a period of time, but they clearly demonstrated peasant anger with an unjust

regime.

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Paris was also in turmoil. As the capital and chief city of France, it was the revolutionary

center. A variety of factions competed to gain power. Moderates looked to the Marquis de

Lafayette, the aristocratic “hero of two worlds” who had fought alongside George Washington

in the American Revolution.

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Lafayette headed the National Guard, a largely middle-class militia organized in response to the arrival of royal troops in Paris. The Guard was the first group to don the tricolor – a red, white, and blue badge which was eventually

adopted as the national flag of France.

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A more radical group, the Paris Commune, replaced the royalist government of the city. It could mobilize

whole neighborhoods for protests or violent action to further the revolution. Newspapers and political clubs

demanded an end to the monarchy and spread scandalous stories about the royal family and

members of the court.

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Peasant uprisings and the storming of the Bastille stampeded the National Assembly into action. On

August 4, in a combative all-night meeting, nobles in the National Assembly voted to end their privileges. They agreed to give up their old manorial dues, exclusive

hunting rights, special legal status, and exemption from

taxes.

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“Feudalism is abolished,” announced

the proud and weary delegates at 2 a.m. As

the president of the Assembly later

observed, “We may view this moment as the

dawn of a new revolution, when all the

burdens weighing on the people were abolished, and France was truly

reborn.”exsonet.com

Were the votes on the night of August 4 voluntary? Both contemporary observers and modern historians note that the nobles gave up nothing

that they had not already lost. In the months ahead,

the National Assembly turned the reforms of August

4 into law, meeting a key Enlightenment goal – the

equality of all citizens before

the law. www.xtimeline.com

In late August, as a first step toward

writing a constitution, the Assembly issued the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. The document was modeled in part

on the American Declaration of

Independence, written

13 years earlier. http://jspivey.wikispaces.com/Prison+Guard+TK

All men, the French declaration announced, were “born and remain free and equal in

rights.” They enjoyed natural rights to “liberty, property, security, and resistance to

oppression.” Like the writings of Locke and the philosophes, the constitution insisted that

governments exist to protect the natural rights

of citizens.

The Declaration further proclaimed that all male citizens were equal before the law. Every

Frenchman had an equal right to hold public office “with no distinction other than that of

their virtues and talents.” In addition, the Declaration asserted freedom of religion and

called for taxes to be levied according to pay.

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Its principles were captured in the enduring slogan of the French Revolution, “Liberty, Equality,

Fraternity.”

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Uncertain and hesitant, Louis XVI was slow to accept the reforms of the National Assembly.

Parisians grew suspicious as more royal troops arrived. Nobles continued to enjoy gala banquets

while people were starving. By autumn, anger again turned to action.

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On October 5, thousands of women streamed down the road that led from

Paris to Versailles. “Bread!” they shouted. They demanded to see the king.

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Much of the crowd’s anger was directed at the queen. Marie Antoinette. Ever since she had

married Louis XVI in 1770, she had come under attack for being frivolous and extravagant. She

eventually grew more serious and even advised the king to compromise with moderate

reformers.

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Still, she remained a source of scandal.

Early in the revolution, the radical press

spread the story that she had answered the cries of hungry people

for bread by saying, “Let them eat cake.”

Though the story was untrue, it helped

inflame feelings against

the queen.

The women refused to leave Versailles until the king met their most important demand – to

return to Paris. Not too happily, the king agreed. The next morning, the crowd, with the king in tow, set out for the city. At the head of the procession rode women perched on the

barrels of seized cannons.

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They told spectators that they were bringing Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, and their son back to Paris. “Now we won’t have to go so far when

we want to see our king,” they sang. Crowds along the way cheered the king, who now wore

the tricolor.

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In Paris, the royal family moved into the Tuileries palace. For the next three years,

Louis was a virtual prisoner.

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The National Assembly soon followed the king to Paris. Its largely bourgeois members worked to draft a constitution and to solve the continuing financial crisis. To pay off the huge government debt – much of it owed to the bourgeoisie – the Assembly voted to take over and sell Church

lands.

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In an even more radical move, the National Assembly put the French Catholic Church under state control. Under the Civil Constitution of the

Clergy (1790), bishops and priests became elected, salaried officials. The Civil Constitution ended papal authority over the French Church

and dissolved convents and monasteries.

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Many bishops and priests refused to accept the Civil Constitution. The pope condemned it. Large numbers of

French conservative peasants rejected the changes. When the government punished clergy who refused to

support the Civil Constitution, a huge gulf opened between revolutionaries in Paris and the peasantry in the

provinces.

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The constitution replaced the old provinces with 83 departments of roughly equal size. It abolished the old provincial courts, and it

reformed laws. The middle-class framers protected private

property and supported free trade. They compensated nobles for land seized by the peasants, abolished guilds, and forbade

urban workers to organize labor unions. xtimeline.com

To moderate reformers, the Constitution of 1791 seemed to

complete the revolution. Reflecting Enlightenment goals, it ended

Church interference in government and ensured equality before the law for all male citizens. At the same time, it put power in the

hands of men with the means and leisure to serve in government.

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Meanwhile, Marie Antoinette and others had been urging the king to escape their

humiliating situation. Louis finally gave in. One night in June 1791, a coach rolled north from Paris toward the border. Inside sat the king

disguised as a servant, the queen dressed as a governess, and the royal children.

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The attempted escape failed. In a town along the way, Louis’s

disguise was uncovered by someone who held up a piece of currency with the king’s face on

it. A company of soldiers escorted the royal family back to

Paris, as onlooking crowds hurled insults at the king. To

many, Louis’s dash to the border showed that he was a

traitor to the revolution. lookandlearn.com

Events in France stirred debate all over Europe. Supporters of the Enlightenment

applauded the reforms of the National Assembly. They saw the French experiment as the dawn of a new age for justice and equality.

European rulers and nobles denounced the French Revolution.

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European rulers increased border patrols to stop the

spread of the “French plague.” Fueling those fears were the

horror stories that were told by émigrés – nobles, clergy, and

others who had fled France and its revolutionary forces. Émigrés

reported attacks on their privileges, their property, their religion, and even their lives. “Enlightened” rulers turned

against French ideas. Catherine the Great of Russia burned

Voltaire’s letters and locked up her critics. barewalls.com

In Britain, Edmund Burke, who earlier had defended the

American Revolution, bitterly

condemned revolutionaries in

Paris. He predicted all too accurately

that the revolution would become more

violent. nl.123rf.com

“Plots and assassinations,” Burke

wrote, “will be anticipated by

preventive murder and preventive

confiscation.” Burke warned: “When ancient opinions and rules of

life are taken away…we have no compass to

govern us.”

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The failed escape of Louis XVI brought further hostile rumblings from abroad. In August 1791, the king of Prussia and the emperor of Austria – who was Marie Antoinette’s brother – issued the Declaration of Pilnitz. In this document, the

two monarchs threatened to intervene to protect the French monarchy.

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The declaration may have been mostly bluff, but revolutionaries in France took the threat seriously and prepared for war. The revolution

was about to enter a new, more radical phase of change and conflict.

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In October 1791, the newly elected Legislative Assembly took office. It would survive for less than a year. Economic problems fed renewed

turmoil. Assignats, the revolutionary currency, dropped in value, which caused prices to rise

rapidly. Uncertainty about prices led to hoarding and additional food shortages.

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In Paris and other cities, working-class men and women, called sans-culottes, pushed the revolution into more radical action. By 1791, many sans-culottes demanded a republic, or government ruled not by a monarch, but by

elected representatives.

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Within the Legislative Assembly, several hostile factions competed for power. The sans-culottes found support among radicals in the Legislative

Assembly, especially the Jacobins. The Jacobins were mostly middle-class lawyers or

intellectuals. They used pamphlets and sympathetic newspaper editors to advance their

republican cause.

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In April 1792, the war of words between French revolutionaries and European monarchs

moved onto the battlefield. Eager to spread the revolution and destroy tyranny abroad, the Legislative Assembly declared war first on Austria, then on Prussia, Britain, and other

states.

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The great powers expected to win an easy victory against France, a land divided by revolution. In fact, the fighting that began

in 1792 lasted on and off until 1815.

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